I have been pondering human snakes, those champion brutes, for several months now. I wrote about them in my post on the workplace perils of being a jerk. And I wrote about them (calling them dragons) in my post "Tough the tragic dragon;" in the latter post I give some tips for snake control. Since my post on energizing and de-energizing people, I continue to hear Eleanor Roosevelt whispering these words in my head: "No one can make you feel inferior without your consent."

I am reminded that snake consent is a choice each of us can make or choose against. There is an inverse relationship between snake consent and self-esteem. Examining that relationship gives us valuable insight. First, let's look at self-esteem. It has enjoyed so much media attention in the last few years that it perhaps has become trivialized. If we look back several years, we can find some definitions more multi-faceted and thoughtful than heard on Oprah.

Attention to the concept of self-esteem is not new. Abraham Maslow
in the middle of the 20th century talked about esteem needs (both being
appreciated by others and self-esteem) as essential to human
development and productivity. More recently, Nathaniel Branden has
written several books on self-esteem including his best-known The Six Pillars Of Self-Esteem.

Brandon defines self-esteem as

the disposition to experience
ourselves as being competent to cope with the basic challenges of life
and as being worthy of happiness.

The definition has two components:
what he calls self-efficacy —

confidence in our ability to think,
learn, choose, and make appropriate decisions

and what he calls
self-respect —

confidence that achievement, success, friendship,
respect, love, and fulfillment are appropriate for us.

In his book Self-Esteem At Work — How Confident People Make Powerful Companies,
Branden writes about how employees with low self-esteem are financially
detrimental to an organization. He says that high self-esteem
correlates with other traits that are important to achievement, such as
“creativity, independence, flexibility, ability to manage change,
willingness to admit and correct mistakes, benevolence and
cooperativeness.” Low self-esteem correlates with the traits opposite
to those on the list, and so you can see why people of low self-esteem
would be financially detrimental.